Political and religious commentary from a liberal, secular, humanistic perspective.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

McCain's Virginia connection

Jeffrey M. Frederick is the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party.

Glenn Greenwald, writing at Salon.com, tells what Karen Tumulty of Time heard "after being invited by the McCain campaign to observe its 'ground game' in Southern Virginia."

Tumulty wrote: "With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points - for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: 'Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,' he said. 'That is scary.'"

Greenwald says that "After noting that this is 'not exactly true,' Tumulty described how that accusation was nonetheless 'enough to get the volunteers stoked':

"'And he won't salute the flag,' one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, 'We don't even know where Senator Obama was really born.' Actually we do: it's Hawaii."

Sam Stein at the Huffington Post says that Frederick's statement was read "on the set of a local Virginia news station."

McCain said he didn't have enough information to judge whether the remark was appropriate. ?

"I have to look at the context of this remarks," said McSame. "I have always repudiated any comments that have been made that were inappropriate about Senator Obama [that's a big lie!]. The fact is that William Ayers was a terrorist and a bomber and unrepentant. I don't care about that. But, Sen. Obama ought be [sic] candid and truthful about his relationship with Mr. Ayers..."

Unfortunately for the old man, his remarks were not coordinated with his campaign headquarters. While McCain didn't have enough information to condemn Mr. Frederick's statement, his own spokeswoman, Gail Gitcho, did. She condemned the remarks as "not appropriate."

Gitcho said, "While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made."

Are these people all freaking idiots?

Obama's connection to Ayers is tenuous at best and totally irrelevant to anything at this point. Ayers is now a respected member of his community and has redeemed himself. Perhaps he will sue the McCain campaign for damaging his reputation. I'll put in a good word for him.

The next bit, while not connected to McCain's Virginia stupidity, offers further insight into the failing mind of the Senator from Arizona.

Stein writes that the Spanish-language Univision published an interview it conducted with John McSame. In this interview, McSame says there is a direct link between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.

The interviewer asked McSame if he agreed with Obama who said that "the Iraq war had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11."

McSame said, "No. We invaded a country that every intelligence agency said was developing weapons of mass destruction. Think of Saddam Hussein in power with oil at 100 dollars a barrel, and all that entails with his commitment which when after he was captured, he stated categorically that he would acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could. Now, Iraq--"

At that point the interviewer interrupted to say, "But he had nothing to do with 9/11."

McSame responded: "He had a lot to do with invading his neighbor Kuwait, and we had to go to war and fight there. He had a lot to do with using weapons of mass destruction, he used them previously, so there's no doubt about his commitment to get them."

There are a number of things we can say about McSame's comments:

One is that he's almost as incoherent as his running mate.

Secondly, he's dead wrong on several points: "every intelligence agency" did NOT say Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction; just the opposite.

Thirdly, the United States provided Hussein with WMD previously, in his war with Iran.

Fourthly, there is evidence that Hussein did not "invade" Kuwait, and that the invasion was staged by George H. W. Bush to justify his own invasion of Iraq to secure the oil fields there. And what the hell does that have to do with anything, especially 9/11. That was in 1991!

Fifthly, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The terrorist attacks were carried out by terrorists of al-Qaeda, most of whom came from our allied country, Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden hated Hussein with a passion, and considered him to be scum, and a threat to Islam. Hussein, in turn, hated bin Laden.

Does John McCain, the foreign policy "expert" not know this stuff?

Finally, two days ago, McCain got around to suggesting that the U.S. economy, which not long ago he praised as being very sound, was hurting his campaign efforts "a little bit."

The day before that, Saturday, the McCain campaign "leaked" to Politico that McSame would be setting "a bold new economic agenda" before the world on Monday (yesterday).

Sunday night, the McCain campaign said, no, McCain would not be offering any "bold new economic agenda" on Monday or on any other day.

"We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way," said spokesman Tucker Bounds. Blah, blah, blah.

Now, either John had no plan planned, or he had a plan that his advisers said was no good, or his campaign people tried to force him to put out a plan because the economy is about to sink their entire effort to put ol' John in the White House, or the McCain campaign doesn't have a clue about anything and are just flailing around wildly to get some attention.